Free The Bound Heart by Elsa Holland Page A

street. The entrance to his tall bluestone townhouse was a few steps away. Her legs were strangely weak. The brace, sure and tight around her calf, felt like the only thing holding her up.
    Down the road, a cab rounded the corner and came up the street. It was one of those old aristocratic sell offs, worse for wear, but a cheap ride home.
    Olive stepped back onto the sidewalk, waited for it to pass. Instead, it pulled up right in front of his house.
    Panic shot through her chest.
    Was he going out?
    She couldn’t possibly approach him on the street. If Jamie was leaving she would come back tomorrow, try again. But she was not so desperate as to stand on the street and catch his attention.
    The large, black, glossy, front door opened.
    Jamie didn’t step out.
    Instead, a woman glided down the steps followed by a man carrying photographic equipment. It was Edgar; he took those pictures for the shop.
    Olive took a step closer.
    Heat pushed out of every pore.
    She knew what had happened inside, what Jamie had been doing, and what Edgar had taken photos of.
    Her eyes as she regarded the woman.
    She was…exotic. But maybe that was simply because Olive knew what she had just done. She was wrapped in a hooded cloak. A luscious swathe of velvet. There was no poverty. No working class clothes or practicality, probably no big boots either. No, the woman looked just as soft, fur-lined pockets would feel around your hands. Like being inside them was the most wondrous place imaginable.
    The woman’s face stayed hidden; and as the equipment was loaded into the carriage first, she waited to the side. Then it was her turn to step into the carriage. Her movements were fluid and smooth, filled with earthy confidence as if her body was comfortable in the erotic world it inhabited. It was a state that most woman would always recognize and never personally feel.
    Olive worried on her lip. She was none of those things. If this was what the women in Jamie’s life looked like…
    The air pushed the woman’s perfume from the carriage window across the road as she talked softly to Edgar. A heavenly smell, like no flower and all flowers at once. It should have made dormant blossoms bloom through the cobbled stones.
    Olive smelt like herself. The day was busy and the walk here long; she smelt like sweat. Not acrid or strong, but a busy, clean smell. It would not coax anything to bloom.
    The carriage door shut and the coachman clipped the horses forward.
    As they rolled away, the front door to Jamie’s house closed.
    Half in shadow, half in the glow of the street light, she stood frozen on the sidewalk. The tree lined street, the wrought iron fences, with their neatly pruned hedges were a world away from Whitechapel.
    What was she thinking?
    That moody bookbinder from the workshop, the one she imagined went home alone at night was a myth. The real Jamie Edwards had women floating into his house for erotic photographic sessions all the time. He dealt in sex, had given up a solid bookbinding profession to do more of it.
    And, his house, this neighborhood. It said that what he was doing paid well.
    Added to her doubts was now the thought that he had stayed away from her, had held back because she was below him. He’d climbed much, much higher than a tradesman, he was wealthy.
    Perhaps, she had misread the day in the workshop, as she seemed to have misread his life.
    Olive put her hands deep into her coat pockets. The money Evie gave her at the tips of her fingers.
    Go home and forget him. He’d forgotten about her. She should do the same.
    She turned.
    Walked back to the corner of the street. Took one last look at his house and started the long trek back to see if the omnibus was still running.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Who the hell?
    Jamie rolled to a sitting position on the couch. Someone was at the front door.
    He’d dozed off after the photo session.
    Stubble scratched his palms as he rubbed his face and tried to wake up. No one was in the house to answer